Adventures in Social Bookmarking- Diigo

This week's adventure was in social bookmarking.  Social Bookmarking is a way to save and organize web pages using tags.  Prior to this week's adventure, I had not heard of social bookmarking.  Diigo is a cloud-based system that allows you to collect, "bookmark", web pages.  All of the items collected go into the Diigo library that can be accessed anywhere.  The pages can be organized by tags for easy access later.  Using the Diigo browser add-on you can use annotations such as digital highlights and interactive sticky notes.  Web pages can be read later, uploaded or captured with annotations.  These pages can also be shared with others for collaborative research.  Another useful aspect of Diigo is "groups", which allows you to form groups that will help to generate shared knowledge over a specific topic or subject.

As an elementary teacher for 2nd grade students, I am wondering how I can incorporate the use of social bookmarking feasible for the classroom.  I recently received my confirmation for my educators account, so I'm still exploring the options I have for my classroom.  One of the helpful aspects of Diigo is that tabs can be created to separate links into various categories.  This will allow students to find information they saved by topic.  Taking notes can become easier with the annotation features of Diigo, which can be recorded directly on the web page then saved into the Diigo library.  Groups can be created for students who are working in together on a project to allow them to send messages to each other and collaborate on the project.

Of course, this tool, as with any Web 2.0 tool, will require training for the students and several opportunities for practice.  One simple activity may be to have students use the highlight feature to identify information in the form of a scavenger hunt or web quest. Once the information is located, they could highlight it, or use the sticky note to type the question that the information answers-similar to Jeopardy format. 

If anyone has any other suggestions for the use of Diigo in an elementary classroom, I'd love to hear them.